Tiny Alert Bay is rich enough in history to warrant two museums. An internationally renowned U'mista Cultural Centre and a civic museum chronicling the evolution of Alert Bay.
U'mista Cultural Centre
"U'mista" means "the return of something important." The U'mista Cultural Centre is aptly named for a museum that showcases a remarkable collection of potlatch regalia confiscated in the early 1920s, as provincial authorities enforced a ban on this cultural and family ceremony. Gradually these items have been repatriated from museums in Ottawa, Toronto, Washington, DC (the Smithsonian Institute) and London, England (The British Museum).
Built in the style of a Big House, the U'mista Cultural Centre opened in 1980 at the western end of Front Street. It stands next to St. Michael's Residential School building, one of the last BC residential schools to close in the 1970s. As a Visitor Centre brochure notes, "these schools were designed as much to inculcate native children with Anglo-European beliefs and values as they provide them with a basic education." By contrast, the U'mista Cultural Centre celebrates First Nations living tradition that is millennia old.
U'mista Cultural Centre Art Gallery
The Potlatch Collection occupies its own gallery space. Entering from the right, visitors see how a typical ceremony unfolds in sequence. The displays include coppers (family symbols of wealth), dozens of cedar masks, and a wide variety of animal figures.
The museum and its gift shop/art gallery is open year-round, Tuesday to Saturday, and seven days a week in the summer high season. U'mista Cultural Centre officials can arrange cultural walking tours with entertaining, deeply knowledgeable guide Lillian Hunt.
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